We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Medical malpractice in heart transplantation from 1994 to 2019.
- Authors
Palaniappan, Ashwin; Sellke, Frank W.; Ehsan, Afshin
- Abstract
<bold>Background: </bold>Heart transplantation is a unique clinical intervention because it involves two separate parties, the donor and the recipient. This increases the potential for the legal liability of heart teams involved with heart transplantation, but there is no research that exists to date that analyzes the etiology of medical malpractice litigations relating to heart transplantation.<bold>Methods: </bold>The Westlaw legal database was queried for all medical malpractice litigations concerning heart transplantation from 1994 to 2019 in the United States. Individual litigations were reviewed for inclusion, resulting in 41 included cases, and then analyzed for legal and clinical data. Statistical analyses were performed with the Fisher exact test and Mann-Whitney U tests.<bold>Results: </bold>The mean age of patients involved in these litigations was 38.88 years, with female patients being younger on average. Female patients received a significantly larger average award than male counterparts (p = .03). Alleged failure to diagnose was significantly associated with settlements (p = .047). An alleged failure to obtain informed consent as presented by the plaintiff was significantly associated with defendant verdicts (p = .03). Incidence of stroke and infection were each significantly associated with nondefendant verdicts (p = .02 and p = .02).<bold>Conclusions: </bold>There should be an emphasis on documenting informed consent from all involved parties in heart transplantation to limit litigations filed against clinicians. As technologies and growing donor pools increase the prevalence of heart transplantation, clinicians would be well-served to be aware of legally tenable practices that will allow them to adopt a higher transplant volume without simultaneously adopting added legal exposure.
- Subjects
UNITED States; HEART transplantation; MEDICAL malpractice; LEGAL liability; MANN Whitney U Test; FISHER exact test; DATABASES; INFORMED consent (Medical law); MALPRACTICE
- Publication
Journal of Cardiac Surgery, 2021, Vol 36, Issue 8, p2786
- ISSN
0886-0440
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1111/jocs.15633